Sunday, May 30, 2010

Memorial Day Weekend

Both of Bill's daughters and their families are great outdoors people. His youngest, Terri and her family are camping this weekend in Pike National Forest. On Friday, we joined them for the afternoon and had such a good time that we might just have to get a camper so we can join them more often. The kids were busy every minute - so much to do!

We usually see the eastern slope of Pikes Peak, but today we were looking from the west.

Notice the Antelope in the foreground of this shot.

Terri's son tells me this is a doe. At nine years old, he is quite the accomplished outdoors man. He chopped wood; built and maintained the campfire; helped cook dinner in the hot ashes; rode his 4-wheeler over the dusty trails and practiced shooting a tin can off a log. Naturally, his younger sister wants to do everything he does. She made dessert, cooking marshmallows on a stick over the camp fire. I had not had s'mores in years - and boy were they good!

The next day we again headed west - out of Canon City and along the Arkansas River to watch Laura and Tim raft the rapids. They are both rafting guides and this was just another day on the water for them. This picture shows a raft (not theirs) that had just flipped people into the water.

Another shot of the same raft. You can see the swimmers in the rapids. Laura tells me there are three huge rocks at this location - and the water was rising so quickly from the snow melt that they went from class III rapids on their first run earlier in the day to class V rapids on this run.

The second raft - the one Laura and Tim are in - had better luck going around the rocks, except they were sideways. The first raft was stuck in the whirlpool for a long time. You can see how hard they were digging their paddles into the water trying to get free. By this time, the swimmers were downstream.

All is well that ends well. The swimmers made it to shore further down the river and were picked up after their raft finally got out of the whirlpool.

There's Laura and Tim in the middle - looking up at the camera. I was set up with a tripod standing on top of a picnic table.

Bill and I kept driving from one outlook to the next, setting up the cameras and waiting for the rafts to pass.

It was quite a ride! Click on this image for a larger view. They were tired after two runs.

Today we are heading back to Canon City to ride the train through the Royal Gorge and have dinner at the White Water Bar and Grill afterwards. Should be fun...